Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter tested, on Feb. 19, 1880, a telecommunications device that conveyed speech over a modulated light beam. U.S. Pat. No. 235,199 (Apparatus for Signalling and Communicating, called Photophone) was issued in December 1880, about a century before its principles came to have wide practical applications, through optical fibers.
Recently, the concept of conveying data in regular lighting has resurfaced. Instead of conveying speech as Bell had envisioned more than a century ago, lighting systems are used to convey information at a frequency that the human eye cannot perceive.
Powering LED arrays that convey information while meeting market demand for size and luminosity of such arrays is a challenge identified by the inventor.
The present invention aims at providing one or more solutions to this challenge.